It is quaint how a catch of a song or a phrase of a lyric will
haunt one along the lonely miles of a walk, up hill and down dale
of one's pilgrimage. Hood found a phrase of a lyric dogging him
down the first stages of his home-road last year. He thought
little of the circumstance at the time, but afterwards he
remembered it, and wondered why the thing had befallen so. The
lines of the phrase had by that time gained meaning for him, more
meaning than he had suspected to be in them, when he said them
over to himself:
'In a wife's lap, as in a grave,
Man's airy notions mix with earth.' *
* From 'The Splendid Spur,' by Q.
He remembered saying them over and over to himself along one
long, sandy, thirsty stretch. Then again, when he sat down by the
drift in huge content waiting for his kettle to boil; then again
on a certain melodramatic night as he paddled in the rain a night
he is not likely to forget.
He had been a missionary in South-Eastern Africa for ten or
fifteen years, I forget which, and his leave that came every five
years was once more due. He started for the railhead, some forty
odd miles from his home, going by way of the post-town, and
calling there for his share of the last mail.
Yes, it was all right. Nothing near at hand in Africa, or far
overseas in England, barred his home-road as far as he could
learn. On the other hand, at least two Southern letters bade him
go back and prosper, and a new welcome had come forward to him
from the North in a writing that he remembered. It was posted in
an Upper River village not many miles from Oxford, and it was a
bidding to a meeting of Oxford contemporaries arranged for the
coming July. They had met on about that same day (the birthday of
the host) five years before.
Hood remembered that day of meeting, as he sat by the drift,
reading his letter, and waiting for the kettle to boil. He
remembered walking out from the city of the spires, and the way
the house looked as he came to it by a path through water-meadows.
What gardens and green shades and coolness of comfort, he
remembered, and linked with that time and that place. He
dreamed a dream with the smell of new-turned hay in it, then
awoke to find himself repeating that mellifluous tag of his about
man's airy notions. The kettle had boiled.
The letter of invitation was written in high spirits. It was
sanguine as to the completeness of their numbers when they should
meet. All but one was likely to be there if only Hood would come
all but one who had fallen out of the ranks. Hood was, somehow, I
think, more overcast by the thought of the one exception, than
rejoiced by the prospect of such a noble muster. Yet, as he
strode along the road, pondering the letter, his longing for
England seemed to grow amazingly. His stride lengthened as his
satisfaction deepened. Twenty miles gave him little trouble that
March forenoon and afternoon. He crossed the wide river in a
crazily perilous ferry-boat, forded a narrow one, and supped with
great content on his bread and cheese.
Meanwhile his carriers fell heartily to hungry men's rations of
bully beef and millet-meal. The rains had been heavy those two or
three days in that last week, as the rivers testified. Now the
clouds were closing up again, and the carriers shook their heads.
Their road was a lonely one. A kraal was some six miles ahead,
the railhead inn was almost nine. When they had gone on for about
a mile of their road, the rain began to come down heavily, just
as the night began. On and on they splashed through the pools and
currents of the wagon-way. Then the rain slackened. A red,
elusive light shone ahead in the dip of a hollow. It seemed a
wandering fire to Hood's eyes as the road twisted suddenly. But
no it was a humdrum wagon-fire of logs. They clustered round it,
chilly and dripping, his carriers and he. A voice called out to
them from the folds of a buck-sail above. A Mashona boy was
crouching in shelter there. He told them that his master was
asleep on the wagon. Hood tried a greeting to this master, but it
gained no answer. He began to take counsel with his comrades, as
they squatted by the fire. 'Wouldn't it be fine to sleep under
the wagon? Who wanted to tramp through a black night with perhaps
a pouring roof of sky above, and certainly a soaked mud floor
beneath?'
The carriers and he agreed to risk the storm (threatening even
now in the distance). Night-prayers were said by that gladsome
fire. Still, the larger of the two muffled shapes above made no
sign. Afterwards Hood's bed was made by the stretching out of a
strip of sailcloth. A blanket was laid over it, and a knapsack
crowned it as a pillow. Hood began to settle himself in with huge
content, a pipe between his teeth. One carrier wriggled himself
up beside him. The two others laid themselves at his feet. By
this time the thunder was rolling up relentlessly, and the
flashes shone green and sinister. The storm was not long in
breaking over them. The rain swished in from the west the way of
Hood's right side. He wrapped his head in his five-shilling
blanket; its cotton-waste was not very waterproof. He had a few
more draws at his pipe in the dark. Pools were filling under him.
He put his pipe down. He made haste for the frontiers of sleep.
He must have got some way in that direction, for he soon found
himself in his bath on the threshold of a dream. Of course, he
should have hardened his heart hygienically. He should have risen
and stridden on with his retainers the miles that remained. But
he had his vein of weakness and sloth; he took the fury of that
night lying down.
At whiles he was across the drift of Lethe in the darkness, but
never for long together. Once he woke uneasily with a start and
saw a flash. The crash followed as in one beat, and the rain was
like the rain in King Lear. He was broadly awake now. Two
carriers were nestling near him. He felt fearfully for his pipe,
and almost mourned for it as washed away. He found it, and turned
over with a happy sigh. 'Man's airy notions!' 'as in a grave,'
'mix with earth' he hummed himself to sleep with that brave
sing-song.
The dawn had come ere he had roused himself again. It was good to
find that the rain was over and the night gone, and that the fire
was blazing. His carriers were chafing their hands and feet. His
sleeping host bulked still as a molded shape in the buck-sail.
Had he moved at all since last night? The big black-and-white and
red-and-white oxen were tethered still. Would their wardens ever
wake up and see them fed? The carriers tied up his packs, and
moved forward with a swing. Still there was no sign from the
buck-sail, boy and master alike were still within, though the sun
had climbed over the hills. Hood shrugged his shoulders, and
moved off down the west road. He left that little mystery, as he
had left bigger riddles in Africa, utterly unsolved.
Soon they dried themselves at a hospitable hut-fire in a village.
It was Lady Day. Hood noted the seasonable blue-and-white of his
blanket as he hung it on a rafter. He made the morning Offering
behind that vaporous screen. Then they ate their food, and
drugged themselves belatedly with quinine against those perils of
the night.
Hood for one felt cheerily defiant, if somewhat stiff from long
bathing. 'This is life,' he thought as the sun came out, and they
strode mile after mile down the valley. Afterwards came the
shining drift, and the last climb up to the Station.
When Hood reached Capetown, he found a letter awaiting him. His
chosen traveling companion an explorer was delayed up-country.
Hood was sorry to get that letter. Then the possibilities of a
lonely journey struck him. He revived the remembrances of
long-room life as an under-schoolboy. He took an open berth for a
three weeks' voyage. Whereas, in the English public school he had
gone to, Gentiles had been many and Jews the exception, the
balance was now redressed.
It was a good time on the whole that he had on this voyage, but
he was glad indeed to be out of the boat and in England once
more, his own South-country England! The spring and early summer
were kind to Hood, then July came and brought the gathering in
Berkshire. All the old forgatherers of five years ago were there,
all but that one they had left behind in Africa. He had gone to
sleep there, three long years ago in the past.
'How I do miss Hunter!' confided the explorer to Hood. 'They seem
to have aged a lot, some of the others,' he explained forlornly.
Hood stared at him as he steered their boat down the river. He
reflected.
'I think you're right,' he said. 'But you haven't aged a bit. Nor
have I. Nor has our host so very much. That's how the dividing
line comes in. The others are all married, much married, and like
their little comforts.'
'You're right there,' said the explorer, disconsolately. 'A
bread-and-cheese lunch in a bar parlor and a twenty-mile walk
didn't suit Warner. He used not to be like that. If only he'd
kept out in Africa after the war.'
'Warner's better than somebody we both know,' grumbled Hood.
'Having a car of his own hasn't made him any younger.'
'Never mind,' the explorer said, 'there's two of us out in Africa
yet, and not likely to marry. There used to be three, usedn't
there?'
'I do wish we had one to spare,' said Hood. 'It'd be rather a
tragedy for the other one if one of us two deserted. But you'll
try not, won't you, and I'll try too.'
While they stayed with their bachelor host, friends of his,
married and single alike, were very kind to them. The rector, who
had only come last year, asked them to make themselves at home in
his garden. It had a blaze of civilization in its front borders,
now, but at the back of the house it was rather wild and very
shady. The rector's youngest sister, Perpetua, kept house for
him, a girl whose English coloring took a pretty and subdued
form; Hood and the explorer were much interested in her romance.
The curate, Warner said, was her continual worshipper. He was a
keen sort of curate that.
She had been kind to him till quite recently. Now she was
uninterested, or seemed so.
The Good-bye of the reunion came round, but the explorer and Hood
went not with the others. The married guests went off to their
home comforts, but these two stayed on for at least a week more.
They became fast friends with both Perpetua and the curate, but
they found it best for social joy not to mix them.
Perpetua shared a sailing expedition with the strangers. Therein
they explored much of the Evenlode, the hay-harvest breeze
favoring them. Another day she went with them afoot to the
Hinkseys. Certain moot points of poetic identification were
hardly settled by that trip, so another followed. They came home
by Cumner both days.
'She would do for Africa,' confided the explorer to Hood one
night. The village band had been playing, and they had thought no
scorn of it. The groups under the dreaming garden trees, and the
full moon, and the white evening-star' had been memorable that
evening.
'She might do for Africa,' said Hood doubtfully, 'but I wouldn't
let her go and spoil her complexion.'
'If you were the curate?' asked the explorer with a smile.
'What's he to do with it?' said Hood impatiently. 'Didn't he
almost promise he'd sail with me in two months' time? I want him
for work.'
'That's too bad,' said the explorer; 'cut that labor-agent
business. Let him stay at home and marry Perpetua. There's a
family living waiting for him across the river. Won't they be
happy just?'
'I don't know,' said Hood, thinking fast.
Next morning the explorer had a touch of fever. The village
doctor dropped in as an anxious friend. He mustered up his
courage to prescribe two grains of quinine. His patient smiled,
and promised to take them with additions. Then he went to sleep,
and left Hood to escort Perpetua to Bab-lock-hythe. She was
adventurous that afternoon. 'She has outgrown the curate,' Hood
thought. The explorer's words recurred to him: 'She might do for
Africa.' 'Not if I know it,' he answered them in his own mind.
His interest in her grew that day, and the next day, when the
explorer was convalescent. The day after that he said 'Good-bye,'
and escorted the convalescent to Oxford.
'Good luck!' said the explorer as they parted near the Martyrs'
Memorial, each bound for his own college. 'Let's stick to our own
way of life, we two. Don't let's get middle-aged just yet, like
Warner and Davies. And, mind, drop that agency rot, and leave the
curate to Perpetua. They're just the age she twenty, he twenty-five.
You, who're forty-one, have pity!'
That evening Hood smoked his pipe in a college garden. One who
had taught him years ago was there. Hood was fairly candid as to
his real thoughts when he talked to him. He was telling the tale
of that rainy night, as the summer twilight darkened, 'I'm just
forty,' he said. 'It seems as if I could hold my own a bit with
younger men, D.G.!'
His friend looked at him thoughtfully. 'It's fictitious youth, he
said. 'Supposing you were to try marrying and settling down.
Supposing you were to try deserting your perennially youthful
bride the Great Adventure, or the High Romance, or the New
Jerusalem, or whatsoever you call her. Supposing you settle down
with an earthly bride say, a sweet-and-twenty one! Supposing you
had to toe the line of four-meals-a-day in a country vicarage.
You would know your age then.'
Hood looked uninterested and aloof. But he recurred to the
subject again later on, and he asked whether a certain living in
the near neighborhood had been filled.
'No,' said his friend; do you want it?'
Hood flushed up. 'It's the sort of place I'd like to settle down
in,' he said, 'if I were coming home. But why should I come?'
His friend made no answer at once. The same sort of wistful look
came into his eyes that Hood had noticed in the explorer's eyes
that afternoon.
'Why should you not?' he said at last. 'Yet I for one would like
you not to renounce the perpetually juvenile lady. I'm not in a
hurry to see the last of your glad, perennial youth.'
That night Hood lay in his friend's spare room, looking out over
the Gardens. He was reading in bed a college list. It had pencil
notes of the deaths or careers of some contemporaries. Rousing
himself from his researches, he sprang up and put the book away.
He leaned down to the window-shelf. What was that book with the
stained red cover! He remembered a romance that had come out in
his college days of twenty years ago, a book by one who had had
his own rooms before him. He took it back to bed with him, and
turned over the pages. At last he found the lyric he sought. One
of its verses held the tag he had remembered so often, but had
forgotten, and wanted that evening, wanted to confirm his own
halting decision:
'In a wife's lap, as in a grave,
Man's airy notions mix with earth.'
He put down the book and switched off the electric light. He lay
a long while in the moonlight, thinking himself far away to
earthen walls and guttering candles. He thought of the chill
penury of lack of blankets that he had known in winter. Also of
the sun's summer glare on white wagon-roads and Kaffir paths.
What wonder that wayfarers' eyes amass many wrinkles around them?
Yet how young one had kept after all; and at what speed one would
age here with electric light and sheets and a stately dinner to
tempt one! 'Man's airy notions.' Yes, he had got some very airy
notions still, whereof the earth was not worthy. Getting old
didn't matter, of course, so much; but he wanted to stick to
doing his own work (his Lord's work) in his own way. He didn't
want to leave like-minded friends in the lurch either. Nor did he
see his way to hug the shore at home with Perpetua, while the
curate braved the 'foam of perilous seas.' Would he ever have the
heart to watch her fresh face spoiling in Africa? Could he bear
to see it wizened and withered in the Tropic of Capricorn? No!
He was soon asleep.
His first waking knowledge was of his friend's asking him the
question, 'Are you going to apply for that living?' He had his
'No!' ready from that last night.
'I'm glad,' his friend said. '"Fly our paths, our feverish
contact fly!" I'd like you to take my advice and be happy yes,
and useful as well as youthful.'
'All right,' smiled Hood from his pillow. 'I mean sailing next
month.'
He went to his home in Kent that same day, and rejoiced in the
Weald. His sister and he made a pilgrimage to Canterbury before
the month was over, from Sevenoaks by way of the Downs.
'This was where Marlowe went to school,' she reminded him. 'I
think he might have been almost as great as Shakespeare, don't
you?'
'I don't know,' Hood answered. 'He was a different sort. I can't
imagine him settled down in middle age at Canterbury like
Shakespeare at Stratford. "His raptures were all air and fire."
His airy notions refused to mix with earth somehow.'
The conversation was not very important, but it showed the
continuing trend of Hood's purpose. He hardened his heart and
went to the Upper River no more ere his sailing from Southampton,
nor did he press the curate to sail with him. The latter wrote
him a very dubious letter. He would make no promises about work
in Africa now. Hood gathered that Perpetua was relenting.
The explorer sailed with him, to his joy, instead of the curate.
They went up from Capetown in continuing amity together. At last
they parted far upcountry. Hood went on his lonely way, not
without some retrospects and some doubts as to his decision.
At a roadside station a well-tried comrade came to greet him.
This friend had married last year, and his wife was donkey-riding
and foot-faring with him. They were but just back from many miles
in very wild country. Seven carriers were with them.
'Heavy loads!' said Hood, shaking his head. 'So you carry chairs
and a table into the Veld?'
'Home comforts,' growled his fellow-missionary. 'Why not be
comfortable? And why, too, didn't you bring a wife back? Some one
said.'
Hood smiled, and the missionary's wife smiled back at him. 'He's
better as he is, dear,' said she to her grunting husband. 'He's a
foot-slogging free-lance. We're the household heavy cavalry. He's
different.'
'Wait and see if he remains so,' rejoined her husband solemnly.
Then the train screamed and went off.
Soon Hood was landing at his own rail-head and receiving the
greetings of many brown people. They seemed glad to see him as he
straggled back so forlornly to them up the platform, and out of
the station. His holiday was done.
But he was soon forlorn no longer. They had so many delights and
anxieties to share with him his traveling comrades. Soon they
were striding away far up the remembered road together. They were
through the drift. How low it was now in this droughty time. Then
they wound along the valley. Hood peered curiously among the
ruddy-leaved bushes as they came round the shoulder of a hill.
Was the silent teamster still outspanned there? No, he was not
there to make them welcome, or to sleep away the tyranny of their
presence. He had fled their 4 greetings, fled their speech and
smiles.' Never mind. If the road was lonely, Spring was in the
land. How the trees and the bushes glowed! 'Surely no man ever in
a land of exile found more of a warmth of welcome home!' he
thought to himself.
It was on Christmas Day (last Christmas Day) that, Hood tells me,
a momentous letter came to hand. It was from Berkshire, and he
did not read it till the time came for him to turn towards his
veld-home. He had held Christmas services in various places.
He was now looking forward to a rest and to supper-time. He was
sitting outside a wayside school as he read that letter. Some
Mashona children had brought him clay figures as Christmas
presents. They graced the grey rock beside him one big figure and
a little figure or two in clay skirts, also a quaint version of a
perambulator. They showed up rather drably against the glory of
Western sun and blue sky.
The letter announced Perpetua's plighted troth. It was from the
curate. He added that they were both looking forward to settling
down shortly in the family living. They might be married in April
or in June. Hood smiled and lit his pipe resignedly.
'So his airy notions of Africa are mixed with earth,' he thought,
'honest Berkshire earth, hurst sand, or down chalk, I suppose.
No, I'm forgetting. That rectory's across the river in Bucks or
Oxon, I forget which. Anyhow the earth's got the better of the
air, and it's arranged that Africa's not to see him.' His eyes
fell upon the clay family grouped beside him. 'It's good
Perpetua's having a home and a family in prospect,' he thought.
'One understands that there's a good deal to be said for such
things when Christmas comes round, at any rate.'
Some words came into his head, words of his favorite poet weren't
they? 'I hope I shall never marry; the roaring wind is my wife,
and the stars through the window-panes are my children: the
mighty abstract idea of beauty I have in all things stifles the
more divided and minute domestic happiness.' He looked at those
clay grotesques rather tenderly. He was thinking of a story in a
life of St. Francis he had read only yesterday, how he had made
him figures of snow and called them in irony his wife and
children and servants. 'Here is thy wife, these are thy sons and
daughters, the other two are thy servant and thy handmaid; and
for all these thou art bound to provide. But if the care of so
many trouble thee, be thou careful to serve one Lord alone.'
He said over to himself those unforgotten words, sadly rather
than scornfully this time:
'In a wife's lap, as in a grave,
Man's airy notions mix with earth.'
He shouldered his knapsack. Then he commended the clay figures to
their donors; he asked them if they would mind looking after
them. He was very grateful; he would have them kept in the school
to remind him of things that earthy little family of his own.
Then airily and fierily he splashed away down the path for home.
Through the marshland he went, and down towards the stream. He
forded the wagon-torn drift eagerly, climbed up out of it, and
strode away beyond.
How young and fresh he felt as he went away again on his campaign
with earth and water! How air and fire subdued their sister
elements to themselves!